A corruption court judge in Indonesia went on trial for alleged bribery. (Jakarta Post)

Prosecutors’ star witness in the trial of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick testified that he delivered kickbacks to the former mayor. More here. (Tickle the Wire, AP)

The FCPA Blog runs a China corruption blotter and continues its series inspired by Confucius. Tom Fox counts his top-10 enforcement actions of 2012. The FCPAProfessor reviews the SEC’s enforcement record of the past year.

The website of a top Philippine senator was hacked over a cybercrime law. (GMA News)

A Romanian national was sentenced to 21 months in prison for his role in a multi-million dollar scheme to hack payment card data from U.S. merchants’ computers. (news release)

Fraud:

Two former bosses from Iceland’s Glitnir bank have been jailed on fraud charges relating to the country’s 2008 banking crash. More here. (IceNews, AFP)

Ernst & Young, using tools provided by the FBI, published the top terms used in emails by corporate fraudsters. More here, here and here. (BBC, Slashdot, Dealbreaker, ComplianceWeek)

Controversial lenders that claim to be owned by Indian tribes and offer payday loans over the Internet have agreed to stop practices that federal authorities say deceive borrowers and violate federal laws. (Center for Public Integrity)

Money Laundering:

The Swiss and Italian governments will split $18 million seized from a Mafia group based in southern Italy. (Reuters)

A columnist hopes banks in New Zealand will play their part in fighting money laundering. (New Zealand Herald)

Tax avoidance is on the rise among the wealthiest Americans. But the “tax man” is coming. (Cagle Post, NPR)

Taiwan signed an anti-money laundering agreement with St. Vincent and the Grenadines. (Radio Taiwan International)

A New Jersey client of HSBC Holdings PLC admitted to conspiring with HSBC bankers New York, London and Geneva to hide $4.7 million in assets from the IRS. (Bloomberg)

A Greek tax scandal is distracting from the broader problem of collecting revenue. More here. (NY Times, Guardian)

Sanctions:

Pollution in Tehran, one of the world’s dirtiest cities, has gotten worse since the U.S. started imposing tougher sanctions in 2010. Iran’s medicine crisis is deepening amid the sanctions. More here. (NY Times, AP, The Atlantic Wire)

A senior Iranian lawmaker said oil and gas revenue has plummeted 45%, blaming Western sanctions for the shortfall. More here and here. (AP, NY Times, Reuters)

Iran is targeting dissidents with a 30,000-strong spy army. The targeting of opposition is one of the reasons cited by Washington for imposing sanctions. (Wired)

A client alert from Akin Gump discusses the latest U.S. sanctions on Iran.

What does 2013 have in store for Syria? A chemical weapons showdown led to rare agreement between the U.S., China and Russia over what to do. A U.S. official told Russian banks to beware of doing business with two Syrian banks blacklisted by Washington. (Al Jazeera, NY Times, Reuters)

Terrorism Finance:

Indonesia is proposing a new law that would allow authorities to freeze bank accounts or seize assets of terrorists and those who finance them. (Khabar)

Whistleblowers:

The lawyer for a former Central Intelligence Agency officer about to be jailed for leaking information to reporters slammed the Obama administration’s treatment of whistleblowers. (Huffington Post)

Coutts & Co., a unit of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC,got the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by an anti- money laundering expert who said the bank reneged on a job offer after finding out he blew the whistle on a previous employer. (Bloomberg)

FinCEN is working on a rule that could turn hedge fund traders into informants. (Reuters)

General Anti-Corruption:

The SEC is allegedly investigating Ernst & Young over whether it violated auditor rules by letting its lobbying unit perform work for several major audit clients, sources told Reuters. The company declined to comment on whether it is being investigated but said all its services for audit clients undergo “considerable scrutiny.”

Afghanistan wants more control over U.S. aid, but aid experts warn that the country still lacks a class of technocrats and administrators capable of administering many programs. (Wall Street Journal)

Faruq Hosni, who was Egypt’s culture minister for more than two decades under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, was cleared of corruption charges. More here. (AFP, AP)

China’s premier stressed the battle against graft. Activists in China are fighting the fire of corruption. (Xinhua, Al Jazeera)

Add a Comment

About Corruption Currents

Corruption Currents, The Wall Street Journal’s corruption blog, digs into the ever-present and ever-changing world of corporate corruption. It is a source of news, analysis and commentary for those who earn a living by finding corruption or by avoiding it. Corruption Currents is written by Christopher. M. Matthews and Sam Rubenfeld and edited by Nick Elliott.

Some posts in Corruption Currents are free but others, denoted by a key symbol, require a subscription.